Witch Hunt
by Dibsthe1
Summary: Historical AU. One age's crackpot is another age's saviour. Hath the jury reacheth a verdict? COMPLETE. WARNING: Character Death.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I owneth not these Invader Zim characters... and THOU art a witch!

**Witch Hunt**

"... the wind beganst to blow harder, and the ghosts, sly fiends that they were, choseth that very moment to wail even louder! The trees outside beganth to shake their branches at the ghosts; clearly they would sayeth if they couldst, "Stay away, vile spirits!"... but the ghosts slippeth through the walls. I risketh a glance upward... and they wert swirling about the room!"

Dib's audience shrank back in terror as gasps greeted this latest development. After a moment, he resumed his tale. "All over the walls! They were everywhere I looketh. I jumpeth behind the chair, and raiseth my Bible to protect me, and shouted at them, 'Leave me, spirits! Begone!' One of them loomed directly over me! I fell back to get away from it, and at that moment my lamp went out... !"

The crowd screamed and groaned in terror, too afraid to utter a word, until at last a small voice from the back of the meeting house could endure the suspense no longer and spoke for all of them. "And then... ?"

"All light vanisheth, and so did the shadows... but as the wind dieth down, I heareth one final, ghostly wail dieth away in 't. The ghosts hath left us in peace... for one more day at least."

The townspeople let out the breaths they had all been holding since Dib began his terrifying tale of how he had, only two nights previously, faced the ghosts. Many in the crowd hastily blessed themselves; others drew from their pockets crucifixes and looked around as if expecting to see at any second a ghost in the rafters, or even behind their own pew. With a low cry, Sara fainted, falling in a heap at Torque's feet. Shaking, he bent down and held her hand. They all gazed gratefully at the only citizen of the town with the courage to face these evil spirits.

All except one.

"Idio's," Gaz muttered.

A few quick ears caught her disagreement; brows knitted in her direction. Had not a dozen appointments with the ducking stool taught this scolding shrew her lesson? How many would it take?

The family had moved into this small town, little more than a village just outside Salem, a short while ago, right before their father had run off to live as a hermit in the forest and pray for the salvation of souls from the Devil, whose agents freely prowled the world as ghosts, witches, demons and God Himself knew what else. Dib and Gaz had lived alone ever since. The townspeople had at first been as suspicious as they always were of strangers, meaning any persons they hadn't known all their lives. However, Dib was the only person they had ever met with courage enough to challenge ghosts, and his willingness to use this rare and valuable talent to help frightened people by facing down phantoms very soon got him welcomed with open arms. Being invited to stay for dinner was thanks enough for him.

Gaz, however, was a different story. She was interested only in what she could get, how soon she could get it, and how little she would have to do in return. She refused to reach out to the townsfolk, spurning invitations to quilting bees and weddings to sit at home staring into the fire, jabbing at it with the poker as she grumbled toothlessly away to herself by the hour about how completely useless and stupid everyone else was. Invitations addressed to Gaz soon arrived farther and farther apart, and then stopped coming at all.

Then she began complaining that everyone was too useless and stupid to invite her to anything.

Dib kept trying to marry Gaz off, but no man would have her; rumors whispered that in addition to her notoriously vicious and acid tongue, she was a brawling vixen with a physically violent temper. Sometimes Dib half wished she would... NO! Such sinful thoughts came from none but the Devil. After catching himself Dib always prayed for God's forgiveness... and then he prayed some more for Gaz's attacks to stop.

"Hush Gaz, holdeth thy tongue!" Dib now said cautiously, trying to quiet her. As the most popular, well-respected and sought after citizen in town, he well knew the low regard in which the townsfolk held her.

"I SHALL NO'!" she barked.

"Gaz, for thine own safety, I prayest thee to - "

Gaz now began to mutter sulphurous threats about sending this one and that one's immortal soul to a nightmare world from which there would be no waking and other such foul curses. By banishing the ghosts Dib had driven the terror from the townsfolk's faces, but Gaz's threats now placed it right back on them again.

- - - - - - -

Then came the day not long after this when everything turned upside down for them both.

At first Gaz merely gave the fireplace an even more vigorous jab than usual and snarled, "Ge' ou' o' my house," but unfortunately for her the bailiffs were even more afraid of _not_ arresting Gaz than they were of arresting her.

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I owneth not these Invader Zim characters... and THOU art a witch!

**Witch Hunt**

Chapter 2

"Art thou a witch?"

"Why dost thou deny that thou art a witch?"

"How dost thou know thou art not a witch?"

"How long hast thou been a witch?"

"Hast thou stopped eating babies?"

The questions, the pointed, relentless questions, kept stabbing through Dib's mind as he hastened toward the town jail to visit his sister. He well knew how witch trials proceeded, and he well knew that only one chance existed to survive the accusation...

The jail was a true hell on earth. Pickpockets, murderers, insane people, blasphemers, loiterers and God knew who else were crammed together in tiny, dark cells. The jailer on duty, a coarse, thickset fellow with a broken nose, was none too eager to show Dib to Gaz's cell, but after Dib explained that he had driven away the Mather ghost a fortnight ago, the jailer's reluctance dissolved and he nodded. "Follow me, then. But knowest thou that this visit be at thine own risk." He gave Dib a skeptical shake of his head, pulled a jangling ring of keys from his belt, and with a crook of a grimy forefinger, bade Dib to follow him.

At the end of a nearly deserted hall, Gaz slumped in the foul-smelling straw of a solitary cell, having been deemed far too dangerous to be in with the rest of the prisoners. She was staring at the wall opposite the door as if something was happening on it that only she could see.

Once Gaz ran out of dire threats to scream at him for not having arrived sooner, Dib began to advise her on what to do.

"Yes, Gaz, yes, I full well know that thou art not a witch. I come home to thee every day, and art thou flying on a broomstick? No, thou art threatening to hit me with 't. Canst thou turn me into a frog? Strike me dumb? No, because if thou couldst, thou wouldst have done so long ago. What comest from thy cauldron? Naught but soup... and very good soup 'tis too, the best in the vil- the, the county!" he added hastily, seeing the look that came to her face.

"I hath seen some witch trials, Gaz, and there be but one way to survive. I pray thee, listeneth thou to me, as thy very life doth hang in the balance... "

"IDIO'!" Gaz screeched as soon as Dib began to coach her. "I cer'ainly shalt NO' say 'A'! 'Ere AR' no witches!"

- - - - - - - -

In the strict, repressive society of the Puritans, just about everything was a sin, or at least a crime. Consequently the court docket was constantly filled with prisoners accused of everything from murder to overcharging, and unless they were either personally involved or happened to have free time to kill, few people even bothered to sit in the spectator's gallery any more.

However a witch trial was something everyone wanted to see, so on the appointed day the entire village crowded into the courtroom. As anxious to catch a glimpse of this witch as they were not to be seen by her and get hexed, they waited with increasing nervousness for the accused to arrive.

Growing weary with the tension, they had just about all relaxed their vigil and looked away for a moment, but they all snapped back to full alertness the instant the door opened. Gaz herself came striding into the room, a grim-faced bailiff on either side of her. She glared at the assembled crowd as if each one of them had personally pushed her into her jail cell. They all shrank back visibly, and this reaction seemed to satisfy Gaz somehow as she stepped into the prisoner's docket.

After opening the session with a rap of his gavel, the magistrate called the first witness.

A little old lady stepped forward timidly, never taking her eyes off Gaz for a second. When Gaz's scowl flared momentarily the old woman flinched and made as if to flee back to her seat, if not out the door. The biggest bailiff in the room had to step forward and stand directly in front of Gaz before the witness would to continue walking to the front of the courtroom to testify.

"She... " the old lady had to clear her throat, "excuseth me... she hath tried to put the evil eye on me!"

"What happened, please?" said the magistrate.

The old woman stared at the magistrate for a second. "Thou saw 't, Your Honor, 'twas right here in the courtroom!"

"No, I meaneth before. Before the arrest."

"Oh. One day shortly after G... the accuseth and her brother moveth into the village, I knocketh on her door to request the borrowing of a cup of flour... and she hisseth at me like a snake! She telleth me to get out, her house was not open to beggars! And she maketh such a FACE! Oh how my heart beganth to pulse! Every time I thinketh of that day my poor heart pulseth quickly again; she hath put the evil eye on my heart!"

"You're sure it wasn't someone else who put an evil eye on your heart?" the magistrate suggested.

"Indeed, no." The old woman shook her head. "It happeneth only when I thinketh of... her."

"I thank thee, Goodwife Cruff. Take thy seat once more."

The second witness was a farmer whose farm backed onto the thickest part of the woods.

"One day last fortnight I cometh in from the plowing. I heareth behind me a sound so fierce and ferocious, I knew 'twas surely Gaz growling at me. I turneth around, and saw a bear! Gaz canst turn herself into wild animals!"

At this, Gaz shook her head and rolled her eyes. Whispers flew around the courtroom. "Why doth she that?" got the reply, "She must be doing that to communicate with the Devil!" which turned into, "She is in communion with the Devil!"

Dib glanced around in mounting alarm. This was already going even worse than he had feared it would.

Another witness, the baker's wife, was telling the court about the time Gaz came to her stall at the market to buy something, something of which she had just sold the last one. "'Sorry,' I sayeth to her, 'we're "fresh" out!'" Here and there around the courtroom, a few faces lightened; the baker's wife was a cheerful soul, not sinfully so, but just cheerful enough to lighten the hearts of all who spoke with her. "And Gaz turneth around and walketh away, but as she doth so, she muttereth under her breath... something," the baker's wife wound up.

"What sayeth she?" the magistrate asked.

"I - I knoweth not."

"Magical curses and hexes, no doubt," the magistrate decided. Dib rocked back and forth, desperate for his turn as a witness; he knew Gaz said much that was neither curse nor hex. "If what she sayest be harmless, surely she wouldst not object to anybody hearing them," the magistrate added by way of explanation. To the witness, he continued, "And hath thee been visited by any calamities after that?"

The witness said immediately, "Oh, aye, indeed! My husband trippeth over a plowshare in the market and cutteth his shin open, and my children catcheth the measles, and my bread goeth moldy and the mold hath the outline of the Devil, and - "

The magistrate took notes for a while before finally thanking the baker's wife for her evidence and calling for another witness.

This time it was the town crier. "One day I runneth to get to work because I had some important news. I runneth past a house, and a dog cometh from the house. 'T chaseth me a ways down the road and biteth me. 'Twas Gaz; she canst also turn herself into a dog, for I hath heard her be called a 'bitch.'"

Still another witness came forward, a prim young mother from the newest house in the village. "I was in the market shopping, and I took the last loaf of bread in the baker's basket. I thought myself blessed, but in the next moment, I looked up to see... that woman! Her hand was stretcheth forth... and the look she gave me!" The witness covered her eyes against the terrifying image. "I... I canst not bear to describe it... she already hath her hand out to curse me! And she told me I would "suffer, horribly..." for taking 'her' bread. Well, some time later, after I had visited my poor sick neighbor Prudence, I fell sick myself! And then my whole family fell sick!"

As the spectators stirred uneasily, Gaz interrupted the proceedings. "'Ee go' sick because 'ee visited a sick woman, 'ou idio'! I 'ad naugh' 'o do wi' i'! And 'hy family got sick from 'EE!"

A gasp of shock tore the air. In front of a courtroom full of witnesses, the accused was scapegoating a poor sick woman for her evildoing! And as if that wasn't enough, she even blamed the witness for making her own family sick!

Citizens continued to come forward to describe something horrible that Gaz had said or done to him or her. To Dib, not even the most sulphurous threats or insults, nor even the occasional physical blow, sounded even slightly unusual. However, he had to admit he could understand how someone could suspect Gaz of being a witch; one blistering glare from her could haunt the mind's eye for days. But foul-tempered and antisocial though she was, Gaz was no witch.

"Hath we any more witnesses?" the magistrate was finally saying.

What made Dib say what he said next is something no one shall ever know. Had he been using any of his brain, he never would have blurted, "Gaz is not a witch."

In that one instant, Dib had forgotten that anybody who spoke a word in the defense of an accused witch immediately became the target of the accusations himself.

To be continued...

_(A/N) Some of my reviewers have asked what a ducking stool is. A ducking stool was a device similar to a seesaw with a chair on only one end... the end that hung out over the water. It was used to punish a scolding, bickering, troublesome woman for disturbing the peace. She would be tied into the chair and dipped into the pond or river as many times as the judge saw fit. _

_I'll be the first to say that punishing only WOMEN for shouting and yelling was the height of discrimination. Thank God that instrument was done away with long ago._

_Today, women have the rights to speak up and protest etc, but wherever she appears, Gaz abuses these privileges to such an obscene degree that she makes one piss-poor poster girl for "female empowerment." Threatening and intimidating others over little or nothing is abuse of power and can easily be used to justify reverting to keeping women ''in their place." _

_Had Gaz lived in the time period of this fic, her endless threats about nightmare worlds etc. over offenses small, tiny, and nonexistent would have made her a prime candidate for the seat of honor in the ducking stool._


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I owneth not these Invader Zim characters... and THOU art a witch!

**Witch Hunt**

_(A/N) Gaz talks the way she does here ("muttering toothlessly") because has lost too many teeth due to her poor eating habits. There were, after all, no dentists back then. _

Chapter 3

The village, however, was not willing to give up Dib's useful ghost hunting services so easily. A stir of murmuring broke out in the courthouse.

"She hath bewitched even her own brother!"

Almost as soon as Dib and Gaz had moved into the village, Dib knew how many of his new neighbors had seen a ghost, which of them was bothered by fairies, who had met a werewolf and lived to tell about it.

When the first terrified family had run into town screaming that they had been run off their farm by ghosts haunting their barn, Dib had immediately offered to help. To more easily spot the ghosts approaching, Dib cut down some stray tree branches that were growing over the window they favored, but the ghosts were very clever at hiding. He next went all the way to Boston to purchase iron nails, sets of which he hammered in geometric shapes into all four walls of the barn. The noise flushed out and drove away many bats and quite a few owls, but Dib saw no ghosts.

When no ghosts had appeared even after a fortnight of waiting, Dib poured a line of salt across all the doorways of the barn as well as the house to keep away the old ghosts as well as any new ones. As a finishing touch, he hung a large bottle of sand in the window, because, he explained, any ghost would have to stop and count the grains of sand before it could enter. Dib assured the family that he had put in enough sand to keep any ghost occupied until sunup.

After that, word spread quickly until the villagers were begging Dib to never move again, saying please don't leave us, Dib, we need you! By the time the witch business had started, the very idea of losing Dib had become unthinkable. Who else could protect them from the creatures of the Devil?

"She triest to kill him, but by having us do it for her! We seest through the witch's evil scheme!"

They needed his help in more earthly matters as well. Was not Dib also unafraid of even the Indians Zim and Gir, those with the strangely colored skin and the even stranger customs?

When the two Indians had wandered into the meeting house a few Sundays ago, all the men had instantly reached for their muskets. But before anybody had time to aim their weapons, Dib had reassured the entire assembly that Zim had come only to trade the beaver skins under the arm of his servant Gir. Knowing a few words of the Indian tongue, Dib then advised Zim to return the next day, because trading for money on the Lord's Day was sinful. As they were leaving, Gir had bumped his bundle against the edge of a pew and the skins burst out and scattered all over the floor, which delayed their departure until the skins could all be picked up and securely tied once again. Gir kept making faces and thumping himself on the head, but none dared laugh in church for fear of hellfire. However, the incident was responsible for many a chuckle and giggle once the service had concluded.

"Killest thou her and the spell shalt be lifted!" It was some time before the judge's gavel could quell the nervous murmuring in the courthouse.

Dib now hastily added, "Gaz is praying for the strength to control her temper. Art thou not praying for that, sister? Why doth thou not pray for God's protection now, pray for it right now, where all canst see thee?" Waving his hand, Dib now turned to face the assembly. "Canst a witch pray?" Dib shouted.

Gaz's only response to this gambit was a scowl. "I need no pro'ec'ion," she sneered, "because I am no wi'ch."

"She hath bewitched her own brother into defending her." Heads shook. They already pitied Dib for having to go home to that scolding shrew day after day. If they saw her as rarely as they did and could still shudder at the mention of her name, the thought of what Dib endured on a daily basis was not for the faint of heart.

The judge then called for Gaz to testify in her own defense.

Gaz's only reply to each question was to sneer, "I a' no wi'ch."

Row after row of faces grimly watched Gaz's every move. _She never goes to any of our social events, but instead stays home staring into the fire. Who knows what she sees there? Hell is fire... perhaps she is wishing to return to hell? Perhaps when she stares into the fire she is communicating with the devil!_

His hands clenched into fists, Dib's eyes silently pleaded with Gaz, _Just say it. Say you're a witch. It's your only chance... !_ He wondered if she even remembered any of his advice for her best defense. She had certainly been less than impressed with what he had urged her to say.

Dib had many times heard and several times actually witnessed what happened in witch trials. Those accused who confessed were actually much safer. For one thing, as soon as they confessed, their accuser's afflictions immediately ceased. For another, the newly convicted "witches" could then bargain for their lives by agreeing to assist in searching out other witches. If they refused to do this, their confession got them at the very least shown the mercy of being hanged _before_ being burnt.

But Gaz stuck out her chin and dug in her heels. Not only did she refuse to believe in witches, but she considered it a surrender to do something after it became too obvious that somebody else wanted her to do it.

Once more came the question. "Art thou a witch?"

Gaz had now grown tired of being asked the same question once too often. Fire in her eyes, she screeched in a voice that seemed to echo from deep within the bowels of Hell itself,** "'Ere AR' no wi'ches, 'ou IDIO'S!" **

The courthouse fell deathly silent, but only for a moment.

A squeaky voiced fellow concealed in the back of the room was the first to cry it out; then his voice was joined by more and more until the entire room was shouting a frantic demand. This time the magistrate did not use his gavel, but instead, joined in the shouting himself.

Defeated, Dib glanced around at the furiously screaming throng, and dropped his hands with a sigh. He had tried his best, but it is impossible to save those who do not wish to be saved.

- - - - - - -

To her dying breath, Gaz screamed that there were no ghosts and there were no witches and that anyone who did believe in them was an idiot.

It did not stop the crackling flames from climbing higher and higher all around her.

The End.

_(A/N) There... and it even fits in with the general tone of the series. You can be 100 in the right without anyone believing you, and this can be made to work against anybody else as easily as it has been made to work against Dib. _

_Thanks for reading, and I invite everybody to visit my newly updated profile, where I explain something you're probably all wondering right about now. _


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